The Dead Collection Box Set #2: Jack Zombie Books 5-8

by Flint Maxwell

  Cupcake perks up at that.

  Abby sees it and says, “Not a good dog like you, Cups.”

  He wags his tail and looks up to her, understanding.

  As we get closer, moving wearily, our eyes scanning the dead streets all around us, I start to make out the words.

  “It’s almost high-noon! Greetings, all you listeners. Forecast’s looking pretty clear. No chance of rain. Traffic is light. Things are bright!” a man says.

  “You bet!” a woman answers. “Just another day in paradise!”

  We all look at each other, our eyes wide.

  “What the fuck?” Norm says.

  “Reminder,” the radio man says, “curfew is in effect at 7:00 p.m. A horde was spotted near the park!”

  “Oh, no!” the woman answers.

  “You bet, Frannie! You bet! And, folks, be sure to watch out for those red robes. Possible sightings near Broadview and Haxan.”

  “Don’t forget to come on down to the White Cloud for a special performance Thursday night. You can find Frannie and I at the WSLD Booth, and if you can’t make it, we’re broadcasting the show for all you out there, so just give us a listen”

  “What. A. Treat,” the woman, Frannie, says.

  Norm jogs to the car, peers into the open window, and reaches inside. The radio shuts off in the middle of cutaway music.

  “Turn that back on!” Darlene says.

  Norm shakes his head. “Don’t need that kind of attention drawn to us,” he says. “Not while we’re this close.”

  Abby nods.

  “We could learn something,” Darlene says. She stalks over to the car. I think about stopping her, but know I have no chance of doing that.

  Norm reaches back in and shuts the car off, holding the keys in his hand.

  “Turn it on!” Darlene says.

  “Darlene,” Norm says.

  Cupcake barks.

  Norm looks at Darlene like a parent about to give a lecture. Of course, our mom wasn’t much for lectures. She went straight for the belt or the wooden spoon, unless one of her boyfriends was around, then she’d pass the punishment off on him. He’d usually take the responsibility gladly.

  Norm looks at me, expecting me to help him out.

  Cupcake barks again. I see him out of the corner of my eye. Darlene goes for the keys. Norm says, “Hey!”

  Abby says, “Cut it out!”

  Norm holds the keys above his head so Darlene can’t reach. She’s clawing at his arm.

  “Norm, quit being a jackass,” I say.

  Abby chuckles. “Might as well tell him to quit breathing.”

  Cupcake continues barking and I turn to tell him to be quiet, and as I do, I see he’s not barking at the kerfuffle going on between Norm and Darlene, but at the group of shambling corpses coming up a residential street to our left. They move with this slow and lazy speed that screams power.

  Their bloody faces shine in the sunlight. Arms dangle as if they’re broken, unable to move. I’m reminded of a dead man swinging from a noose, lifeless, terrifying.

  “Guys!” I say. Cupcake continues barking. This isn’t a time to panic. I kneel down and scratch him behind the ears. It doesn’t stop him. I feel his body convulse with each ear-pounding ruff.

  They don’t pay me any attention. So I move.

  I walk over to Norm as fast as I can without running. Not the time to panic. Not yet. I snatch the keys out of Norm’s hands.

  “Hey!” he says.

  “Get in,” I say, opening the door to the shit-brown Mercury. Cupcake is the first one to listen.

  “What — ” Abby says, then sees what’s coming for us. Terror doesn’t show on her features. Neither does it show on Darlene or Norm’s. What does show is cool, calm understanding. They know what we have to do. They know we can’t fight. They know we have to run. These are the looks of a group of people who’ve been stuck in the war much too long. People who understand the large chasm that separates life and death, who understand there’s a space between these two states of being, but there’s no in between. You’re either dead or you’re alive.

  We file into the Mercury. I stick the key into the ignition. The engine grumbles to life. It’s not a nice car by any means. The inside ceiling is shredded, the material and yellowed foam hanging down in tatters as if a dog had gone ballistic one hot summer’s day while trapped inside. But that’s not the first thought that comes to my head, is it? No. What does is of a person buried alive, clawing at the casket while their oxygen supply slowly runs out, and with it, their life. I guess it’s just the way of the world nowadays. Yeah, you could say that. Then again, those dark thoughts have always been present in my head. It was why I got into this writing gig in the first place, wasn’t it?

  “Everyone in?” I ask, shifting the car into gear. Cupcake barks in reply.

  “You heard the man,” Abby says.

  Darlene is in the passenger’s seat. I throw it into drive, wholly expecting the engine to cough out on me or for the bottom of the car to drop. Those zombies are close and gaining on us by the second. What chills me is that it’s so sunny outside that I can’t see their golden eyes. Good, I think, I’m sick of their golden eyes. I’m sick of them all.

  The muffler must be gone because the noise the car makes as it lurches forward is that of a 747. I mean, everyone in the whole damn world is going to hear us.

  “Maybe we should run,” Norm says. And I’m beginning to think it’s not a bad idea after all. Luckily, we don’t need to get across the country in this bucket of bolts. All we have to do is get away from the dead, and luckily San Francisco is hilly because we don’t need to count on this piece of crap’s engine. We can just coast.

  I shift into neutral and turn the engine off and the harsh churning changes into a hum. We coast down the hill, the group of zombies coming up to meet us getting smaller and smaller in the rearview.

  Twenty-Eight

  Oh, but the fun is just beginning. I know this by the way Darlene shrieks. I try to cut the wheel at the last possible moment, but I’m not quick enough. The Mercury smashes through a barrier of —

  I try to double take. Don’t need to. What we hit is smeared up on the windshield. It’s human torsos. Bodies. Blood. Skulls crack the glass. Metal whines and rumbles. The car gallops over the bodies that go beneath the tires.

  I slam on the brakes, feeling the slickness of skin and blood beneath the wheels.

  “Oh, my God — ” Darlene says when the car stops. Cupcake has launched forward from the backseat. His head is between my knees. Despite all of this, his tail is wagging. I reach over to Darlene and put my hand on her thigh. She looks at me, pale.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “Everyone else?” I ask.

  Cupcake barks softly. Norm and Abby mumble something akin to Yeah.

  Norm groans. “I’m telling you, little bro, we gotta stop letting you drive.”

  I ignore him and look out the bloody, cracked windshield. The bodies scattered on the brick road in front of us, leaking red onto the dusty pink bricks, are not zombies. All of a sudden a cloud of horror bursts inside of my head. Did I just drive a shit-brown Mercury into a crowd of living people? Oh, my God. I know I’ve been on the cusp of being a serial killer in light of all the recent events that have gone down since the world ended — and I know, it’s self defense — but I’d never stoop this low.

  None of the bodies — eight (best believe I’m counting) — are moving. They are sprawled out on the brick like discarded rag dolls. Arms and legs at broken, jagged angles. Blood on their faces distorting their features. I see a young kid lying next to a woman who, even in death, looks like him. His mother, I’m assuming.

  This horror bleeds into sadness. I feel sobs building in my chest. But I can’t cry. I can’t let my family see me cry, despite all of them aside from Cupcake looking on to the horrific scene with masks of terror on their faces.

  Then, Norm reassures me. I don’t know how he
knows what I’m thinking. Maybe it’s the way I look. Maybe he’s beaten me up so much in the past, he knows exactly what my pre-sobbing face looks like. I don’t know, but damn, am I glad for Norm right now.

  “Look at their heads,” he says. I see him in the now-askew rearview mirror. He points to the middle of his forehead, right between the eyes.

  I look out the side window and I don’t have to look far to see a corpse. What Norm is talking about is the bullet hole in this woman’s face. Right in the middle of her forehead. A bullseye. It’s an execution-style shot. Dried blood is still crusted around the wound. My eyes scan, head craning. Cupcake crawls over my lap to see what all the hubbub is about. I see a man no older than Norm on the ground, facedown, but his head turned almost all the way around like that chick in The Exorcist. In the man’s forehead is the same hole. I open the car door, not heeding anyone’s calls for me to stay inside. The ground is wet with blood puddles. The soles of my boots are almost lost in all of it, it’s that deep. The shit-brown is now a bloody shit-brown. It makes me want to hurl, this whole scene that I caused.

  I check every body. There’s a bullet hole in every single one’s head — even the kid’s.

  I won’t say I’m relieved. Relief wouldn’t be the right word because I’m disgusted first and foremost. Disgusted that someone could do something like this to human beings.

  But did I honestly expect any better? Let’s be real, this world is full of terrible people.

  “…crash down on Broadview,” Frannie says over the radio.

  “Shut that off!” Norm hisses.

  “Looking like a doozy out there, make sure to stay clear, ” the man answers, but the radio is snapped off.

  “Are they watching us?” Norm asks, looking at me like a man whose just discovered the secrets of the universe.

  “Yeah, I think they are,” Abby says.

  That doesn’t make me feel good.

  Then a voice sounds in the distance. Not a guttural grunt — thank God — but a human voice.

  Twenty-Nine

  They’re dressed in robes. Red robes. From a distance, they almost look like Father Michael. That thought brings up a deep sadness I had buried since leaving the Mojave. He’d been murdered by Doc Klein, murdered in cold blood, and all for what? A distraction so Klein could get away from me before I could stop him from ending the world.

  But this isn’t the time to feel sad or sorry. There’s times for that, yes. Times when I’m lying in bed and the world is quiet, all I can hear are the sounds of Darlene’s breathing and Norm’s snores. Times when I can’t relax because my mind runs a million miles per hour, those types of times. It’s not that time at all. Now is a time to survive.

  I reach for my gun, which is holstered on my hip, covered in the blood of the dead people all around me. These robed men are not menacing, not really. It’s the weapons they carry that are. Those big assault rifles that are strong enough to blast this Mercury to hell.

  One glance at those weapons and it’s enough for me to stand up and start moving. Abby gets back into the Mercury’s driver’s seat and grinds the engine until it lets out a dying wheeze. This Mercury isn’t as good as the Jeep we’d had in the Mojave, the one Norm was able to get to work with his magic touch. We just aren’t that lucky.

  “Darlene,” I say, and go over to her.

  “I’m here,” she says. She crawls out of the Mercury, her own gun held low.

  The men are advancing on us with graceful speed. What started as a jog has turned into a full-on sprint.

  “You’ve interrupted the ritual!” one of them shouts. “My stars! My stars! He will be so upset!”

  Who? I wonder.

  I look to Norm. He shows no inclination of running. Neither do I. Ritual? If these are the ones responsible for the murders of the people in the street, it’s time for them to be dealt with.

  Darlene is behind me. I always put myself in front of her.

  “You’ve interrupted the ritual. Death! Death to pay!” the robed man in the lead says.

  “Norm?” I say.

  Norm raises his pistol, squints one eye. “Far enough, buddy,” he mumbles.

  Darlene and Abby look on in pure horror, as if they’re surprised Norm is ready to kill to defend us. I raise my weapon, too, following my older brother’s lead.

  I know from experience that if we run, we’ll chance splitting up, and if we’re split up then there’s an even greater chance of death — one of them, that’s all I care about. Not if I die.

  The robed man doesn’t stop and he raises his own assault rifle in return. Norm shoots. This actually surprises me. I didn’t think shots had to be fired. I didn’t think they’d actually be fired.

  But I’m dumb.

  The man stops at the sound of the shot, not because the bullet tears through his flesh, but because the bullet whines off of the pavement. There’s a spark almost as bright as the sun, and an echo that reverberates all throughout the dead city. After that, a heavy silence falls over us all.

  “Yeah, we mean business,” Norm says, grinning.

  “Drop the weapons,” I say, trying to be the somewhat level-headed one. I count five of them. Their robes are a bright crimson, almost bloody. The lead one wears a hat made of what looks like felt, flimsy, something the Pope might’ve worn before the zombie virus undoubtedly took him along with everyone else at the Vatican.

  He stops, raises his hands, and the men behind him stop. They all vary in age from teenaged to ancient, but they all have this horrendous look on their face. A face starved. Starved of something that isn’t food. Civilization, maybe. Entertainment, even. It’s a sick look and I wonder if I wear the same mask. If the world has fucked me up so bad, I’m not even aware of it…truly aware.

  “Do you understand what you have done?” the man says.

  “I don’t care,” I say.

  “Terrorism!” the man yells and when he yells, he’s close enough for me to see his jowls jiggle and the wispy white beard to blow in the soft breeze that brings us the smell of the dead.

  The first groans of the zombies reach us from the crest of the hill. A face hovers high above us, the skin hanging off in rags, flayed by fingernails or blades. Then the rest come from behind it. They pick up speed with the slope. Some of them fall over and roll, their bodies slapping the bricks wetly. Time is not our friend right now, and neither are these clergymen. Great.

  “You interrupted a delicate process,” a middle-aged man in the same garb says, stepping forward. “The bodies collected here were handpicked with the finest care, not only meant to appease the dead, but meant to appease the Man Who Has Risen.”

  “You’re feeding zombies?” Norm says. “You realize how crazy that is?”

  “No,” the leader says. “No! You don’t understand. It’s a sacrifice. It’s an offering to the Gods!”

  “They will not be happy with what you did,” the younger clergymen says. “You ruined the sanctity of the ritual. He Who Has Risen shall smite you all!”

  “You are doomed! Doomed!” the older one yells.

  Darlene pushes past me. I’m instantly hit with a spike of fear. I liken it to finding out your seatbelt isn’t buckled when you reach the apex of the first big hill on a roller coaster. I can’t help it. I know she’s stronger than she’s ever been. She’s killed her father, and not even I do that.

  “We don’t want trouble,” she says and she says it in her sweetest voice. The men don’t lighten up, though. Like they said, we’ve found trouble. “We’re heading for Golden Gate Park,” she continues. “I have family there. A mom and sister. I haven’t seen them since this happened.”

  I wish she wouldn’t have said anything.

  The older man smiles. It’s not one of happiness. It’s sly, like the cat who’s stumbled upon a sleeping mouse. But he lowers his rifle.

  “Golden Gate Park?” he says. “Haven.”

  Darlene shouts, “Yes! You know it?”

  “Darlene,” I hiss, my gun still
raised. “Stop.”

  It’s too late.

  Norm says, “We’ll give you guys to the count of three to get your sick, twisted faces elsewhere or we start blasting.”

  “One…” I say.

  “Two…” Norm continues.

  “Okay! Okay!” the older man says. “We will be going. No trouble. No trouble please. Just know you’ve upset the Gods, and he shall come for blood. Mark my words. Blood.”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” I say. My finger twitches. The image of the dead kid and his mom, bullet holes in their heads, comes to mind. I want to make these men pay for what they did.

  “Fine, we go. We go,” the older man says, backing up, then turning. The rest of his group follows his lead.

  I don’t know how I feel —

  The older man turns back around like lightning, his hand disappearing into his robe.

  He’s fast. Too fast.

  The small pistol explodes out from the darkness. A zombie screeches much too close. Another one has started munching on the remains of the young kid’s corpse and his mother.

  Norm, on the other hand, is not as fast as the robed man.

  Luckily, I am.

  I pull the trigger and blow this guy’s fist into bloody chunks. The gun goes pinwheeling into the road, catching rays of muted sunlight and sending them back to us like a disco ball.

  The rest of the clergymen stutter backwards, shielding themselves from the spray of blood. The zombies eating on the corpses look up at the sound of this man’s pained screams. And they are terrible screams. The type of screams that make me feel pity — but only for a second. They are lucky, in a way. Lucky I don’t blow all of their heads off.

  Then I think of the kid again. Now getting devoured by some undead nightmare.

  I have to do it. I have to make these men pay.

  I pull the trigger.

  The gun jams. Blood bubbles out of the slide.

  Shit.

  Thirty

  Firefight. It’s a word I know all too well. It’s an act I’ve lived through too many times before. It never gets any easier, especially when I have my fiancé and the rest of my family to worry about.